Arise, Shine

One of my favorite Christmas memories as a kid was piling into our old school Dodge Caravan after dinner to head over to a neighborhood in town that was known for its Christmas lights. I remember the massive line of cars that slowly snaked its way through the neighborhood. It seemed like everyone had their house decorated, with each house more impressive than the last. We bounced from the windows on one side to the windows on the other, beckoning one another: “Look at those lights!”

Christmas lights are magical, aren’t they? I love the accidental tradition we’ve created of putting them up at church in Advent. A number of you helped last Saturday as we strung them up in the greenery inside the sanctuary, on the bushes out front, up the trees and down the walkway. The beauty of those tiny lights invites a childlike sense of wonder and awe. Every night the church now glows with the warmth and sparkle of thousands of tiny lights shining defiantly in the cold and dark of winter.

What a picture for us in this Advent season! As we prepare ourselves for Christmas, this is the image I want to carry with me. We’re descending into the darkest days of the year, and that darkness seems at times to be both literal and metaphorical. The darkness would seem to swallow us whole but for this: a tiny light burning brilliantly.

That’s the thing about darkness, it doesn’t really exist. Darkness is only the absence of the light. What seems at first so threatening is revealed as laughable once the light shines. Even the smallest of lights drives the darkness from the room. As the light shines, it draws our attention away from the darkness that once seemed so fearsome and draws us into its warmth. We find ourselves standing in the darkness, and, though we are surrounded by it, it’s not the darkness we see, but those tiny lights—the beauty, the wonder.

Isaiah promises that there’s a day coming when, “Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended” (Isaiah 60:20). Each Advent we remember that we’re still waiting for that day. In our world the sun still goes down and the days of mourning go on. But in these cold, dark nights we have seen a light shine, a light which the darkness could not put out. The darkness still surrounds, but we now know it for what it is: an absence waiting to be filled, a promise waiting to be kept. We’re no longer transfixed by the darkness, but by the light shining radiantly.

But there’s more, because the picture isn’t one giant light but a thousand little ones. Beholding the light and glory of Christ, it’s our faces that begin to shine. It’s you and it’s me strung up out there around the church, reflecting Christ’s light and love into the darkness of the world. It’s you and me that our neighbors will see as they drive past, craning their necks in awe and wonder at the light of Christ that shines defiantly in the darkness.

This is how Isaiah said it: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn” (Isaiah 60:1-3).

     In Christ,

Pastor Andy